'Deadpool' Became Lovable Antihero With Ryan Reynolds' Self-Aware Narration

He’s been called the Merc with a Mouth and wears the name with pride, Deadpool is Marvel’s original fourth-wall-breaking anti-hero and so self-aware that narration is a fundamental aspect of his character. Breaking nearly every record for films with an R-Rating, Deadpool soared to box-office acclaim and has been the subject of pop-culture fame ever since.

He knows that he’s in a movie, and true to the comics, interacting with an audience is what Deadpool does best. It’s his most defining character trait. 

In the comics, he has an additional speech bubble to let readers know when he’s speaking to them directly, but in film, voice-over narration does the trick just as well and brings every one of his quirks to life. The whole point of Deadpool is that he’s telling us his story - his way.

Deadpool loves to break the fourth wall and talks to us as if we’re in the same room as him, so it's no surprise that voice-over narration fits in perfectly with this movie. 

It doesn’t just articulate every major scene and tell us the story of how he went from being Wade Wilson to the Merc with a Mouth. It’s his entire personality. Without narration, there just wouldn’t be any story because there wouldn't be any Deadpool.

No matter how gruesome Deadpool gets, we can’t help but fall in love with him - he just wants to make us laugh. He’s not only endearing but Marvel’s wise-cracking sad clown and a whimsical joy ride of a character. It’s no secret that Deadpool was Ryan Reynolds’ passion project for years - it’s the perfect role for his comedic man-boyish acting style. His personality and voice-over fit the character like a red and black leather glove, and even the comics have Deadpool describing himself as “Ryan Reynolds crossed with a Shar-Pei”. 

He’s perfectly self-aware and even knows that his movie is a comic book adaptation.

Deadpool constantly makes jokes and pop-culture references just for our benefit; whether it’s looking at the camera to address the audience, or projecting his thoughts to anyone watching through voice-over, Deadpool wants to be heard. He’s got hot takes on everything and even goes so far as to criticize the career choices of the actor portraying him. He’s the nagging satirical voice that we all feel before we do something ridiculous. 

Even by begging Francis to not give him a green animated super suit, he simultaneously takes a stab at Green Lantern and reassures viewers that Deadpool isn’t the same as his last venture into superhero films. 

Deadpool doesn’t just talk to the audience, he interacts with them. 

Unlike a lot of narration-driven films, the way it’s used in Deadpool isn’t limited to voiceover because he narrates everything he does right in front of us.  From the very first scene, he playfully counts the bullets he has left to try and impress the audience and actually grades himself on how well he uses them. He’s lighthearted, jovial and even manic at times. He’s a mercenary and a man who kills for money, yet we can’t help but swoon over his spritely personality anyways. No matter how brutal the scene, or the amount of bodies left in his wake, Deadpool manages to keep us laughing the entire time. 

Even when Ryan Reynolds isn’t directly narrating as Deadpool, any time the audience sees him speaking in a mask, that’s voice-over dubbing. Most people may not know this, but Reynolds actually had to record a lot of the jokes and dialogue after filming to keep his voice from being muffled under the mask, and that’s why we can hear him so clearly in costume. At one point in the movie, Deadpool even makes fun of this and hints it to the audience by asking, Is the mask muffling my voice?

Deadpool broke every preconceived notion we had about superhero movies. It not only shattered box office records for R-rated movies but raked in more than ten times its modest 58 million dollar budget and inspired clamoring waves of Halloween costumes for years to come. It was also the first superhero film of its kind to embrace the R-rating and actually gain critical acclaim because of it. Despite its rating and liberal use of blood, gore, murder and (of course) swearing, it managed to end up on a family-friendly streaming platform like Disney+. 

Even though the franchise is now owned by Disney, the third upcoming installment has no plans to do away with the formula that made it this successful in the first place - after all how could they? Deadpool is in charge of his own story and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. 

Kim Handysides is an award-winning voice artist, coach, and thought leader in her industry. Her narrations have been heard on Discovery, Netflix, and the major networks, in iMax, the White House and the Smithsonian.